Attention poetry mavens: any suggestions for good contemporary poets (either in general or particular collections)? Have sudden appetite but very little idea where to start. Any advice welcome!
Has it really been eight years since I last wrote here? It was picking up Murdoch’s The Book and the Brotherhood that reminded me. My reading diary said I read the novel in 2011, but I don’t believe it. I have no memory of it. (And you would.) I came back to this blog to cross-reference. Yes, I can see I bought it in December 2010 – for a steal – but wrote nothing on it. An old blog, like an old diary, is a shed skin, preserved by sentimentality, laziness, and neglect. For a while I was appalled at how openly I exposed my ignorance! I thought it was charming. (An Americanism?) Also for trying to speak in a register I couldn’t consistently command. But now that blogging is a dead art, that the energy that once lived there has been translated into Tiktok, or Youtube, or Substack, the blog becomes practically private. I can come back and paw over this old, shed skin. When you come across old writing, there’s an inevitable measuring up between the self you were then and the sel...
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I'm not sure if you've already read some of their work. But here are a few of my favourite poems, by my favourite contemporary poets.
Marginalia, by Billy Collins : http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/marginalia.html
Farewell, by Agha Shahid Ali :
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.in/2002/12/farewell-agha-shahid-ali.html
Leaving and Leaving You, by Sophie Hannah :
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/leaving-and-leaving-you/
- Shruti
http://www.stpetershigh.org.uk/DEPARTMENTS/ENGLISH_DEPT/PRUSH/KS4_Resources/Freshwater/Motion_Freshwaterstuff/Freshwater.html
Daniel Berrigan - Selected & New Poems - the well known social activist and Jesuit priest, who served time in jail for such activities as burning draft records and pouring blood on nuclear warheads. I recently discovered this book in a small used book store (the best kind) in Sandpoint, Idaho and have been consistently floored by his poems, ranging from his stark early religious imagery to his final moving series about his friend Thomas Merton.
Christian Wiman - Every Riven Thing - I came across this amazing poet - also the editor of Poetry magazine - after reading his essay about his incurable disease in Image magazine.
Dana Gioia - Pity the Beautiful
Richard Skelton - ok, this guy is great, especially if you love the uk countryside - check his web site Corbal Stone Press to get an idea of his work. I first came across his work in a musical context via a cover story in The Wire music magazine - in an attempt to confront his grief over the early death of his first wife, he immersed himself in the countryside and wrote an incredible series of poems and prose fragments, in addition to composing sad drones which he recorded in the open moors. Can't rave enough...